


we passed the fields of gazing grain

by MathildaHilda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathildaHilda/pseuds/MathildaHilda
Summary: you forgot how the song of dying goes,
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	we passed the fields of gazing grain

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't decided whether or not I liked the ending or not, so when writing this at 3 am I'm still a little bitter, but I felt the need to write a sad and kinda sappy piece about my favorite childhood show.

There’s a certain… _emptiness_ to dying.

A certain feeling to it that has no discernable name other than… _empty_.

A black well that seems without end. A cold black pool without a reflection.

( _a cold nail to the back, one could say,_

_if one were willing to talk of such things,_

_one isn’t,_

_so one shuts up about it,_ )

At a certain point, you forget the feeling, despite having felt it countless times before – because, let’s be honest, how many times have you died?

And, how many of those times do you remember the distinct feeling that comes with it?

Maybe, it feels empty – _has felt empty_ all the other times – and all the more empty right now because you _know_ – despite Sam’s eyes begging otherwise – that this is the last time you’ll ever feel it.

The last time you’ll have to gaze into a black pool with no end or reflection. The last time you’ll remember your brother’s hands on your skin, warm against cold, and warding of death – because, after all, that’s what you’ve done for the last thirty-something years of your life.

Staved off death to another time, another moment, when you’d perhaps find yourself more equipped to handle it. Staved it off, kept the door shut, sealed the windows – if only to earn one moment more in a life that seems to have despised pretty much everything from the start.

Here’s the thing, though, about dying more than once; you leave everything behind. Again. 

You can’t help it. It’s not your fault. _~~(because i could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me)~~_

Eventually, the lock breaks on the door. The nails fall off the windowsill. Something cracks the paint and breaks down the wall, and all that you’re left with is an empty frame of nothing of what once was safe.

They’ve used the floorboards for your casket. The walls make up your cross. The flowers in your hands bear the colors of the walls _~~(green, and blue, and red, and yellow, and-)~~_.

It goes like that – every time.

It’s the same story with the same ending. It just begins a little differently. The reasons why it happens are a little different.

The ending? Well, it’s always pretty much the same.

There’s always too much blood in your hands and in your ears and in your eyes and in your mouth to make up for anything living at all.

Sure, it’s not always yours.

But, it is yours in far too many stories. Sometimes, it’s Sam’s instead.

You can’t stand those stories. That’s okay.

He can’t quite stand your stories either when it’s your blood on his hands and your heart drowning in a black pool that has no end.

Sometimes, when the stories call for it, the blood has belonged to other people.

And… what then? Not everything can be your fault. At least now, you have a pretty good scapegoat.

Unfortunately, that scapegoat is gone.

Nevertheless, this isn’t on you. Not even the ‘leaving Sammy behind’ is your fault.

( _‘til the end of the road, and everything,_ )

You have somewhere else to be at the moment. Regardless, it’s always important to try and say goodbye.

Goodnight works.

And, if not goodbye – why not hello?

( _Nice to see you again? See you later?_

_no, they’re rubbish,_

_forget them,_

_you forgot how the song of dying goes,_

_why not forget how goodbyes go too?_ )

You do you. It’s your final story. Your final verse.

Epilogue. The End.

It’s all you. Every choice is yours, except for this very last one.

Dying in all your glory, your brother in one hand and your blood in another, and you say goodbye because you _know this is it_. You know _when_ it stops. _How_ it stops.

For a moment – right before that big black pool of no reflection and then Heaven on an open road – you know every secret in the universe.

But it doesn’t matter.

The universe can keep its secrets of who really killed JFK, and why pea-soup tastes as blandly as it looks, or why there’s always a sock missing from the dryer.

You don’t need those secrets.

You’ve never needed a whole lot of secrets because the only one you cared about was never an actual secret.

Your brother loves you.

And it is _more than enough_.

So, ride off into the sunset every chance you get.

You’ll always have more.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and referenced/crossed out poem is from Emily Dickinson's "The Chariot".
> 
> My new Tumblr can be found here; [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/matwrites1519)


End file.
